All Cultures
are inherently predisposed to change and, at the same time, to resist change. There are dynamic processes operating that encourage the acceptance of new
ideas andthings while there are others that encourage changeless stability. It is
likely that social and psychological chaos would result if there were not the conservative
forces resisting change.

There are three general
sources of influence or pressure that are responsible for both change and resistance to
it:

1.

forces at work within a society

2.

contact between societies

3.

changes in the natural
environment

Within a
society, processes leading to change include invention and culture loss.
Inventions may be either technological or ideological. The latter includes such
things as the invention of algebra and calculus or the creation of a representative
parliament as a replacement for rule by royal decree. Technological inventions
include new tools, energy sources, and transportation methods as well as more frivolous
and ephemeral things such as style of dress and bodily adornment.

Culture loss is an
inevitable result of old cultural patterns being replaced by new ones. For instance,
not many Americans today know how to care for a horse. A century ago, this was
common knowledge, except in a few large urban centers. Since then, vehicles with
internal combustion engines have replaced horses as our primary means of transportation
and horse care knowledge lost its importance. As a result, children are rarely
taught these skills. Instead, they are trained in the use of the new technologies of
automobiles, televisions, stereos, cellular phones, computers,
and iPods.

Within a society, processes
that result in the resistance to change include habit and the integration of
culture traits. Older people, in particular, are often reticent to replace their
comfortable, long familiar cultural patterns. Habitual behavior provides emotional
security in a threatening world of change. Religion also often provides strong moral
justification and support for maintaining traditional ways. In the
early 21st
century, this is especially true of nations
mostly guided by Islamic Law, such as Iran,
Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

21st centuryprofessional
woman working in a job
not open to women in her
grandmother's generation

The fact that cultural institutions are integrated and
often interdependent is a major source of resistance to change. For
instance, in the second half of the 20th century, rapidly changing roles
of North American and European women
were resisted by many men because it inevitably resulted in changes
in their roles as well. Male and female roles do not exist independent of each
other. This sort of integration of cultural traits inevitably slows down and
modifies cultural changes. Needless to say, it is a source of frustration for both
those who want to change and those who do not.

The processes leading to
change that occur as a result of contact between societies are

1.

diffusion

2.

acculturation

3.

transculturation

Diffusion is the movement of
things and ideas from one culture to another. When diffusion occurs, the form
of a trait may move from one society to another but not its original cultural meaning.
For instance, when McDonald's first brought their American style hamburgers to Moscow and
Beijing, they were accepted as luxury foods for special occasions because they were
relatively expensive and exotic. In America, of course, they have a very different
meaning--they are ordinary every day fast food items.

Acculturation is what happens to an entire
culture when alien traits diffuse in on a large scale
and substantially replace traditional cultural patterns. After several centuries of
relentless pressure from European Americans to adopt their ways, Native American cultures
have been largely acculturated. As a result, the vast majority of American Indians
now speak English instead of their ancestral language, wear European style clothes, go to
school to learn about the world from a European perspective, and see themselves as being
a part of the broader American society. As Native American
societies continue to acculturate, most are experiencing a corresponding loss of their
traditional cultures despite efforts of preservationists in their communities.

Sequoyah (ca. 1767-1843)

While
acculturation is what happens to an entire culture when alien traits overwhelm it,
transculturation
is what happens to an individual when he or she moves to another society and adopts its
culture. Immigrants who successfully learn the language and accept as their own the
cultural patterns of their adopted country have transculturated. In
contrast, people who live as socially isolated expatriates in a foreign land
for years without desiring or expecting to become
assimilated
participants in the host culture are not transculturating.

There is one last process
leading to change that occurs as an invention within a society as a result of an idea that diffuses from another. This is
stimulus
diffusion--a genuine invention that is sparked by an idea from another culture.
An example of this occurred about 1821
when a Cherokee
Indian named Sequoyah
saw English writing which
stimulated him to create a unique writing system for his own people. Part of his
syllable based system is illustrated below. Note that some letters are similar to English while
others are not. To see the entire Cherokee syllabary,
click here.

16 of the 77 Cherokeealphabetical characters

It
is also likely that ancient Egyptians around 3050 B.C. invented their hieroglyphic writing
system after learning about the cuneiform writing system invented by Sumerians in what is
today Southern Iraq.

There are processes
operating in the contact between cultures as well that result in resistance to change. These
are due to "us versus them" competitive feelings and perceptions. Ethnocentrism
also leads people to reject alien
ideas and things as being unnatural and even immoral. These ingroup-outgroup dynamics commonly
result in resistance to acculturation and assimilation.

Summation

In order to better grasp the
relationship between all of the different mechanisms of change operating within and between
societies, it is useful to see them again in summary:

We now
understand that this holistic approach to understanding
culture change must also include consideration of changes in the environment in which a
society exists. For instance, environmental degradation of fresh water supplies,
arable land, and energy sources historically have resulted in the creation of new
inventions, migrations, and even war to acquire essential resources.

NOTE:Human activities globally
now move ten times as much earth and rock as all natural processes.
One of the side effects of this is soil erosion that is causing the
progressive loss of farmlands at the same time that the human need for them
is growing. Driving this has been our rapidly increasing human
population. Research done by Bruce Wilkinson of the University of
Michigan has shown that this human-caused erosion began to exceed nature's
ability to repair it nearly 1,000 years ago (Wilkinson Geology 28,
843-846, [2000]).